But it is not of architecture, even though ranking with the noblest, that we must talk here, but rather of that strenuous flesh and blood which, although long resolved into dust, gives to Wymondham the interest of living, breathing—aye, and hating and fighting—men, who fought and failed and died the death for their fellow-men in this fair land of East Anglia, more than three hundred and fifty years ago. That rebellion for which William Kett suffered here, and his brother Robert from the battlements of Norwich Castle, was the very natural revolt of the Norfolk peasantry from the rapacity and selfishness of the landowning class, who sought to enclose the wide-spreading commons where the peasants’ cattle and geese freely pastured. There were other rural grievances, but of a minor kind. No one of them was new when the trouble broke out, but they had at length, after the smouldering discontent of years past, come to such a pass that but very slight excuse was needed to set Norfolk in a blaze. Already, nine years earlier, a certain John Walker, of Griston, had said, “It would be a good thing if there were only as many gentlemen in Norfolk as there were white bulls,” and this remarkable expression of opinion was rendered the more impressive by the favour it found among the country folk, who passed it from mouth to mouth with every sign of approval. Some rhymester, too, had been at work, and produced this prophetic verse:— The country gnoffes, Hob, Dick, and Hick, With clubs and clouted shoon, Shall fill the vale of Dussin’s Dale With slaughtered bodies soon. Dussin’s Dale was, and is, outside Norwich, and the picture of a rural revenge was thus presented to the rustics, who had long suffered from manorial encroachments.